Defacto reality... that's rich. More like your pushing an 'alternate realty' with 'alternative facts' Thanks for the laugh, I knew better than to entertain someone with negative rep.

Can you buy games on Steam without DRM. Yes.
Can you play certain games on Steam without needing Steam. Yes.
Are developers required to use DRM on Steam. No.

FACTS. Everything else is speculation...

But as always, believe what you want, it's not like this discussion matters in the grand scheme of things. GOG will do what they will and so will Steam. All of this is pointless.

Let's move on, and agree to disagree. If you can't I will before this gets even more petty.

Let's see how much of a stickler for accuracy you really are....

So I buy a physical copy of Civ V from a retailer. I get home and find out I have to create a Steam account to be able to play it. Why?

Why didn't the Galaxy installation ask him if he wanted to enable all of it's features?

When you install a program whose one of it's main feature is auto-update of games it's kind of your responsibility to disable it if you don't want to use it.

I have to disagree with 'gog made it better'.
Look at Dying Light: Enhanced Edition.
My buddy was going to get this for a 3rd friend of ours that does not have the game. Both my buddy and I have the game on Steam.
Well, when he went to purchase the game, he found out that not only was the game gog Galaxy, but thatwe would NOT be able to even play together, as 'galaxy MP' is ONLY for 'other galaxy users', and it wont even see our Steam games.
So, guess what?
He is waiting for the Steam sale to purchase the game, so we can all play together.

So, how is 'galaxy mp can only see other galaxy mp players' making things better?
By splitting the community?
By splitting the users that can play with each other to be even smaller than they are now?

The way I see it (and I AM a long time member of gog, I was in at the beta before the store even opened up), gog just wants to throw their hat in the ring, like every other publisher out there.
And, do you think they are going to do better than Ubisoft? Or Origin? Or MS GFWL? Or what was that other one that shut down and sold out to a bigger company?

I do use Galaxy, but that was basically to help test it, and for The Witcher 3.
But, I am going to start downloading the offline installers manually, and set them aside on a disk or hdd, for when gog does go fully galaxy.
Because, although I do have all of those I listed above and galaxy, I still play my offline games that I like to play, and I like to play them offline, not on a platform that launches so I can then launch my game, and maybe the launcher will let me play my game or maybe the launcher will not let me play my game, either because there is a check that failed, or a patch that I dont need nor want automatically downloads, or because my network is offline for some reason, maybe because I lost my job and cant afford internet access at the time, or for a year, or even 2 or 3 years.
I like my drm free games to be drm free, and I want to launch them and play them without any hassle.

Maybe what I said makes sense to you, or maybe it doesnt, but the fact that galaxy is splitting up the MP userbase of a game that gog and steam and amazon sell, that the other platforms can see everyone else but galaxy can only see itself, that is BAD business right there.

Edit:
OK
I removed the emotional part of the post.
I am just bummed we didnt get to use the gog version of dying light with our steam version.
I was under the assumption that when I started testing the galaxy INSTALLER, that it was just that, an installer.
Now it seems they want to make it more, and 9/10 times I dont NEED my GAME to be 'more'.
Because, some Steam and Ubi and Origin games get broken when doing an update, or it is not a neccessary update for me personally.
Sigh, I should never have gotten involved in this debate.
:P

The devs are free to use GOG's servers for both GOG users and Steam users like a number of games already do to enable crossplay. The developers choose to split the community, this is not on GOG and does not diminish the fact that in a of ways Galaxy does make it better. Depends on how you view it.

Without Galaxy devs would have probably released on GOG with no online MP as the game uses Steamworks and Steamworks isn't allowed on GOG because that is a Steam thing.

GOG and Steam are separate stores, both competing against each other. This should be viewed in concept as Xbox One vs PS4, you play among the community in which you buy the game.

I think it's up to the devs to implement the Galaxy's "cross-play" feature, not GOG; but if you can point me to evidence saying that GOG has control over this, please do. What you're basically asking in this instance, I think, is for GOG to keep out features for a small community's sake, but then other people will complain they're getting ripped off because Dying Light doesn't have multiplayer, and GOG will never be able to make everyone happy.

I'd like to see API docs for Galaxy.

I'd love to have your lives. You know, ones that are so problem free that GOG Galaxy a non DRM client is a big deal. If only.

My life has other worries beyond that (not life & death worries, but the kind of worries I expect most people would have).

However, as someone who consumes a great deal of intellectual property (both for work and pleasure), affordability, good access and ownership-like access for goods that are presented and sold like an owned product matter a good deal to me.

If nobody cared about those things, you'd be paying 30$+ for a single book/movie/game, accessible online only, probably through some restrictive client you'd have to install with access revokable at any time without justification.

If you enjoy books, movies, games, musics, software and various other forms of intellectual property and would like to enjoy continued fair affordable access to those things, then be grateful that some people have been (and are) sticking their heads out for consumer rights.

If most publishers throughout the history of IP had had their way, we'd be in the stone ages right now in terms of content access and customer rights.

The people who are concerned could just be people, who are passionate about games and have a strong hatred for having to use clients, you know. Being worried about being ignored by GOG doesn't necessarily mean they have perfect lives.

That's certainly true of crappy freeware.

Worth noting theres still some huge oversights from the 'Galaxy pool' such as no way to see multiplayer serial keys...

Not when you are legally allowed to make backup copies of it, like more then once, as I already mentioned, courts in my country stated.

That's actually the one thing I don't understand about Galaxy. The other things like Galaxy being a download manager and library management system is fine, but these multiplayer "features" somehow are puzzling me.

Are devs using them because they genuinely were out of lack to find a technical solution implementing it themselves, or are they just outright refusing to produce DRM free multiplayer games?

I find one option as unlikely as the other and remain puzzled.

Not that it matters much to me, not using Galaxy or Steam.

Cross-play not working is surely a severe problem. Don't know why it has to be tied to authentification with a client though. Why not native cross-play through the game ignoring third party stuff?

The community is split anyway. And it's not too bad because we don't want to rely on only a single monopolistic platform, do we?

It would be up to the devs to produce games that work independently of the place where you bought the game. Everything else would effectively lock you in there. Is that what we want?


Easier yet, refrain from using it (being optional). If one of the main feature is auto-update and someone doesn't want to auto-update, the most straightforward solution is not using the product, if convenient.